


Nothing But Distance and Skyline

by brynnmck



Category: Hard Core Logo (1996)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-13
Updated: 2007-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 18:13:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brynnmck/pseuds/brynnmck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"It's one in the morning, we're in the middle of Buttfuck Prairie, neither of us is exactly a mechanical genius, and I'm not sleeping in your shitty dead rental car," Billy says, and slams the door shut behind him.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing But Distance and Skyline

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://ds-shakespeare.livejournal.com/profile)[**ds_shakespeare**](http://ds-shakespeare.livejournal.com/) , for the prompt: _I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it._ \-- _As You Like It, II, iv_. Thanks to [](http://sdwolfpup.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://sdwolfpup.livejournal.com/)**sdwolfpup** for the beta and cheerleading. Title stolen from The Headstones.

For a long time, there's near-silence, just deliberately steady breaths and the faint hiss of steam from the engine and goddamn crickets chirping in the distance. Then,

"Joe."

Joe grips the steering wheel harder. "Not a fucking word, Bill."

"I'm just saying that next time—"

_"Billy—"_

"—I'm picking the fucking car."

"Fuck you," Joe mutters, shoving hard off the steering wheel to slam back against the seat. God- _fucking_ -dammit.

Billy sighs and pops the passenger door open, letting in a rush of cool, slightly damp air.

"What are you doing?" Joe demands.

"It's one in the morning, we're in the middle of Buttfuck Prairie, neither of us is exactly a mechanical genius, and I'm not sleeping in your shitty dead rental car," Billy answers, and slams the door shut behind him.

 _"Fuck,"_ Joe hisses again, banging on the steering wheel one last time with a closed fist, then opens his own door.

Billy's got the trunk open, faint light spilling out of it and shadowing the set, pissed-off line of his mouth. And yeah, Joe likes Billy pissed off, likes Billy spitting-sneering mad, raw and real; Joe _trusts_ that, and anyway, Billy fighting isn't usually that far from Billy fucking. But this is different, this is a flavor of pissed-off-Billy that Joe's been seeing more and more often lately, this is "pissed off because Joe fucked up my big fucking plans" Billy, and that's exactly the kind of shit that Joe had been wanting to get away from with this little trip.

Joe grits his teeth and looks around, trying to find… _something_. They've got some of their smaller amps in the back, wrapped in blankets. Billy's guitar, too, but that's obviously off-limits, even though Joe thinks about suggesting it just to change the subject.

"Here," he says instead, stripping the blankets off a couple of the amps. Billy's still rooting around in the trunk, like if he just looks hard enough, he's gonna find a three-room suite and a full mini-bar in there. "Come on," Joe tells him, and walks off into the dark without looking back, moth-eaten cloth awkward in his arms.

Billy makes him wait a few seconds, but then Joe hears the trunk slam, hears Billy's boots crunching through the dirt behind him and the put-upon sigh Billy's started to perfect, like it's all such a burden, like Joe _planned_ this or something. Which, OK, he sort of did, or at least the "let's drive to the gig a day ahead of time, meet with some of those contacts you're so fucking excited about" portion of things (and yeah, so he hadn't actually lined up any contacts, but Billy'd find them, he always did, moths to a flame), but the part where the fucking rental car he'd blown a week's worth of per diems on went tits-up on the side of Highway 666 in the middle of fucking _Deliverance_ country… that part, Joe's just as thrilled about as Billy is, and he's not fucking sighing himself into a fugue state about it.

He speeds up a little, wanting to get further off the road, wanting to get _somewhere_. Maybe the trip had been a stupid idea—waste of time, waste of gas money, waste of effort—but the thing is, all his life, Joe's been pushing, and the great fucking thing about Billy is that he pushes back. But the band's been getting more gigs lately, bigger venues, more fans, more questions, and Billy… Billy's _shifting_ under the lights, somehow, brighter and sharper, so that sometimes Joe catches him out of the corner of his eye and doesn't really know what he's seeing. And the more that happens, the more Joe wants to mark off the space he's always thought of as _his_ , with his arm around Billy's shoulders or his mouth around Billy's cock or the span of a shitty car on a deserted highway. There's a kind of panic simmering in his stomach all the time now, panic that the day is gonna come that he's gonna push and Billy'll just be gone, no pressure back against him, and Joe's gonna end up in free-fall, nosedive, right down into empty space.

Billy's voice slices through the vertigo. "You gonna do something with those blankets, or are you waiting for me to"—vague waving motions with his hands—"weave a mattress out of wheat stalks?"

"Just gettin' the lay of the land," Joe answers calmly, and starts shaking out blankets over the flattest patch of dirt he can find. Fucking prairies. He hopes there aren't coyotes. "See?" he says when he's done, stretching out on the blankets with an elaborate groan. "Fantastic."

Billy folds himself down onto the blankets with a raised eyebrow that hits a hell of a lot harder than a punch in the face.

_Fuck._

The ground is cold, and fucking uncomfortable, and Billy's like a block of ice next to him, rigid. On reflex, Joe digs his pack of smokes out of his pocket, snags one between his lips. He's lifting the lighter, already anticipating the first sweet slide of smoke, when Billy reaches over and grabs his wrist. "The fuck are you doing?"

Joe looks over at him, startled. "What?"

"You wanna start a fuckin' brush fire, ya mook?" Billy snatches the lighter out of his hand, his fingers skipping through the flame, too calloused to burn. He sticks the lighter in his pocket. "Jesus, Joe." He sounds just annoyed enough to give Joe hope—annoyed is more _fuck off_ than _fuck off and die_ , at least, so that's progress. "You live to see thirty, it'll be a fucking miracle."

"All thanks to your tender loving care, Billiam," Joe says around the cigarette still dangling from his mouth. Tastes fucking disgusting, honestly, but he's a fucking addict, he'll take what he can get. "That and clean living," he adds solemnly, and _aha_ , Billy's laugh bubbles out of him, just a question of holding the spoon over the flame long enough.

Joe stretches a little and grins up at the sky, tension bleeding out of his shoulders. Same rocks and dirt underneath him, but they feel smoother now, pressing easily up into his back like that weird acupressure shit that Pipe's girlfriend is always talking about. The air is cool, just the right side of cold. Joe puts his cigarette behind his ear and breathes deep.

"Christ. It's so fucking _quiet_ out here," Billy says a few minutes later, wondering, and the words go right down Joe's spine. Because Joe hates silence—silence is a question he can't answer or a space he can't fill or the hard line of Billy's shoulders with his back turned; silence is uncontrollable—but this is different, this is _quiet_. No traffic, no lights, no pissed-off hotel managers, no wasted groupies, no Pipe giggling or John muttering to himself, no coke or whiskey or contracts or reporters, no audience. Just darkness and open space and Billy's shoulder barely touching his.

Joe's singing almost before he realizes it, soft and low. "The line was made from the left to the right…"

Billy joins in almost immediately, his voice sliding under Joe's, imperfect harmony. "What was left in the middle was nowhere in sight, you've had your chances, you've had your time, don't waste the rest, get in line…"

They sing it all the way through, then start it over again, but halfway through Billy changes it to "Ill Repute," and after a verse Joe blends that into "Blue Tattoo," and he can hear Billy smiling. When they were kids, Joe's basement had been the battleground, where they'd played their fingers bloody and given each other black eyes over chord progressions and pinned each other down to see who could make the other one come fastest. And Joe had loved every second of it, still swims in those gloriously messy memories more often than he'll admit, a constant home movie running in the back of his brain. His bedroom had been on the second floor, though, and every once in a while, when the blood and come were dry and Joe's parents had poured themselves into bed, he and Billy would crawl out through his window, lie on the angled roof and bullshit for hours, stupid jokes and elaborate plans and singing—their songs, other people's songs, it never really mattered. Just music. Harmony.

Finally, in the middle of a line, Billy's voice gets swallowed into a yawn, and Joe opens his eyes—weird, he doesn't remember closing them—and yawns, too. Billy's moved, or Joe has, he's not sure which; one of Billy's legs is bent, tented over Joe's, his foot nudging up against the inside of Joe's knee, and Joe's got his arms folded underneath his head, his tricep resting along the warm, sharp line of Billy's shoulder.

"Think John and Pipe'll see the car on their way through in the morning?" Billy mumbles, sleep-slurred.

"Christ, I hope so," Joe snorts. "John's new meds and Pipe's, well, whateverthefuck Pipe's got goin' on, we'll be lucky if they don't end up in Mexico."

"Let's go let's go let's go let's go," Billy sings quietly, "five hundred miles, to Mexico…"

Joe's with him halfway through the line, but Billy trails off at the end of it, slow steady breathing. "You're going to sleep?" Joe asks, in the deeply offended tone he's heard from more than a few chicks over the years. "You're not going to make sweet love to me in the moonlight?"

Billy chuckles. "Yeah. Maybe if you'd fixed the fucking car."

Joe considers trying a little persuasion, if only because he's pretty sure it'll work, but he's tired and comfortable and there's always the morning, anyway—even more fun if there's a chance of some farmer finding them engaging in perverse homosexual acts in the middle of his rhubarb patch, or whatever this is. So he just points out, "But if I'd fixed the car, we wouldn't _be_ in the moonlight."

"Exactly," Billy drawls, balling up one of the blankets and dumping it on Joe's face. Joe laughs and almost holds on to it—it was a _gift_ , after all, it would be rude to refuse it—but he doesn't want to listen to Billy's teeth chattering all night, so he drops it back over Billy's shoulders. "Dumbass," Billy mutters, tucking the blanket into the space between them.

"I love you, too, man," Joe says, grinning, and that's the last thing he remembers until morning.

 

*****

 

He wakes to bright sunlight and John's smiling face about six inches from his, which is kind of a fucking scary thing to wake up to.

"Jesus, finally. We thought maybe you were fuckin' dead or something," Pipe offers from a few feet away, his voice dragged-out and fascinated. Joe would guess that Pipe's hit his favorite breakfast joint already, but he pretty much always sounds like that, so it's tough to tell.

"I sure as shit hope death is more comfortable than this," Billy groans, sitting up, the words all morning-gravelly.

 _Damn_ , Joe thinks as his cock twitches hopefully at the sound. _So much for shocking Farmer Brown._

Well, regrets are for pussies. He sits up, too, shielding his eyes. "Took you motherfuckers long enough."

"Sorry, Joe," John grins, "we—we didn't realize you'd decided to wait for us."

Joe looks up at him. "That's funny, Johnny, thanks, that's exactly what we needed. Good to know we can count on you."

Billy's standing, stretching. "Come on. Can't be more than a few miles away from a pay phone. We'll call a tow truck, ditch the car, Mulligan can come pick it up later." He starts toward the bus, parked like a beached whale on the side of the highway. Their little car looks like roadkill next to it. Pipe and John turn to follow him, hunched over in the morning chill, snickering a little.

Joe just sits there for a couple of seconds; there's a weird pull in his chest, and he can't quite get a deep breath. "Billy!" he calls out, before he has time to think about it.

Billy stops, turns around, his arms held out wide. "What?" he yells back.

 _Wait_ , Joe wants to shout at him, _you fucking asshole, just fucking wait_ , but that's stupid, so he shrugs and stands and gathers up the blankets. "I'm driving," he says coolly, tossing the bundle at Billy as he goes by, and tries to make himself believe it.


End file.
